Fallujah: The Complete Destruction of a City

Fallujah before the attack

                 In 2004 and 2005, during the Iraq war, the US launched a murderous attack on the city of Fallujah. It is critical to give an honest account of what happened to the city to understand the nature in which the US is “freeing Iraq”. First the US sent in planes to bomb the city and then the US launched a full scale ground invasion leaving the city in ruins. Many people were killed. One prominent Iraqi historian and scholar said that “Hulagu Khan was humane compared to the Americans”.

                Hulagu Khan was the leader of the Mongol Empire from 1256 to his death in February of 1265. The grandson of Genghis Khan, Hulagu used the great army to expand the Mongol Empire across southwest Asia, which included modern day Iraq. In January of 1258, the Mongol army, led by Hulagu met the Caliph’s army on the outskirts of Baghdad. The Mongol army flooded the Tigris River behind the Caliph’s army, trapping the army between the Mongols and the flooded river. The Mongols proceeded to slaughter the Caliph’s army, many of which were drowned in the flooding waters behind.

                The Mongol army proceeded to seize the city of Baghdad, raping, killing, looting, and destroying much of the city. The army looted and destroyed precious historical documents and books. Death counts from this time are hard to be pinpointed, but estimates range from 90,000 to 200,000 people killed in the conquest of Baghdad. The army destroyed mosques, libraries, and hospitals. They hunted down the Caliph’s sons and killed all but one of them. Marco Polo writes that Hulagu starved the Caliph to death, but other accounts suggest that the Caliph was rolled in a carpet and trampled to death by Hulagu’s men on horses.

                The comparison between this and the current destruction of Iraq was not made in jest. We know that the death toll in Iraq is much higher than 200,000 and that the US had Saddam hung, while killing his sons as well. The city of Fallujah is a perfect example of this utter destruction in the name of “Iraqi Freedom”.

And after the bombing campaign

                The first report of a visitor to Fallujah after the attacks of November 2004 and early 2005, was by an Iraqi doctor named Ali Fadhil. Fadhil said that the city was “completely devastated” and that the modern city now “looked like a city of ghosts.” According to Fadhil there were very few dead bodies of Iraqi fighters in the streets, but there were plenty of civilians dead. Fadhil says that Iraqi fighters were ordered to leave the city just before the attack. Fadhil talked to other doctors in the city that told him that the entire medical staff of the various hospitals had been “tied up” when the US attack began. The orders to tie up the medical personal came directly from the US leadership, ensuring that the hospitals would not be able to function. The attitudes of the invaders can be summed up by a message that was written on a mirror in one of the hospitals, the message was written in lipstick and said “Fuck Iraq and every Iraqi in it.”

                People began limping back to Fallujah in the ensuing weeks after Fadhil’s report. Reports are made as the people “enter a desolate world of skeletal buildings, tank-blasted homes, weeping power lines and severed palm trees.” The city of Fallujah, population 250,000 before the attack, was now ruined and “devoid of electricity, running water, schools or commerce.” The US imposed a strict curfew and continued to occupy the city they had just demolished. But let’s take a step back to November 2004.

                In November 2004, the US occupation forces began the second attack on the city. It had been previously attacked but not to the same extent and this attack was in response to the first. In March of 2004, Iraqi insurgents ambushed a convoy of private military contractors (Blackwater) as it entered the city. They killed 40 of Blackwaters men and the US had to retaliate. The city was still standing so the US decided to change that. The attack began with a several week-long bombing campaign from the air. This was said to be done in order to drive out everyone but the adult males in the city. But of course it had other effects. The US-led forces “cut off or restricted food and water to encourage residents to flee.” Even though using hunger and deprivation of water in a war against a civilian population is a flagrant violation of the Geneva Conventions. When men ages 15 to 45 attempted to flee, the occupying forces made them go back without question. It didn’t matter if they supported the US or the Iraqi opposition, they were sent back to their death. The plans outlined for Fallujah by the US were starting to look a lot like the early stages of the genocide at Srebrenica in July of 1995. But the Serbian military did truck the women and children out of the city before the massacre. The US did not. The exit roads to the city were closed and the occupying US forces were sure not to let anyone out. The bombing attacks killed whole families, including babies and pregnant women.

                After the bombing campaign, the US sent in the ground troops to finish off the city. The NY Times even reported that at the beginning of the ground campaign, “patients and hospital employees were rushed out of rooms by armed soldiers and ordered to sit or lie on the floor while troops tied their hands behind their backs.” People that were in the hospital because of the “conflict” – which, let’s remember that the US uses the word conflict, as a euphemism for US aggression – or for any other reason were removed from care and tied up. This was also a horrible violation of the Geneva Conventions, which state that “fixed establishments and mobile medical units of the Medical Service may in no circumstance be attacked, but shall at all times be respected and protected by the Parties of the conflict.”

                The US bombing campaign had destroyed the Central Health Center in Fallujah. One doctor was able to escape and reported that at least “thirty-five patients and twenty-four staff” had been killed in the initial bombing campaign. Shortly after the attack, the entire health center collapsed on itself and the people inside. The US leadership said that these reports were “unsubstantiated”. There is only one hospital that survived the attack that has inpatient care, but the access to this hospital was impeded by US forces. In another gross violation of the Geneva Conventions and international law, the US denied the Iraqi Red Crescent from entering Fallujah. This was despite the fact that the Iraqi Red Crescent was given a UN mandate to “meet the needs of the people of the local population facing a huge crisis.”

                Joe Carr of the Christian Peacemakers Team described the situation as a “painful similarity” to the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories in which he had just came from. Assistance and aid was held up for many hours at the very limited entry points to the city, more for harassment than for security. The occupying US army would regularly destroy produce in the city where food was scarce and prices were high because of the US control of all things that came into the city. The US-forces were blocking ambulances from transporting people for medical treatment. Dozens of people are forced to pack themselves into a “burned out shell” of a building as a home.  And of course all the other acts of brutality that are seen in the Palestinian territories, such as blowing up of homes, assault and murder of innocent civilians. Carr wrote that the “ruins of Fallujah, are even worse than Rafah in the Gaza Strip” which has been completely destroyed by the Israeli (with US help) occupation.

                Where was the media and the responsible journalism on this near-genocidal action by the US. Outside the US it did exist but inside we saw much of the same propaganda and lies as always. CNN described the situation as the US military “achieved nearly all their objectives well ahead of schedule,” as “much of the city lay in smoking ruins.” There is a front-page story in which the author interviewed a senior marine commander who says that the attack in Fallujah “ought to go down in the history books.”

                Responsible journalism was not even considered. Al-Jazeera, which is the most critical new channel in the Arab world, was openly criticized by US officials because they had “emphasized civilian casualties” in Fallujah, as if this was irresponsible reporting. The US showed later how it would deal with what it perceived as problematic media. The US kicked Al-Jazeera out of the country as the US prepared to prop up a pro-US leader in the “free” elections.

                Even if you are to look up reports of Fallujah in the US media sources today, you will find inaccurate accounts of what happened there. The media acts as if it was a battle. The media constantly says that “most of the civilian population” was able to flee the city. I am not arguing that no one was able to flee the city but most is a horrible misrepresentation.

                The destruction of Iraqi cities and specifically historical artifacts, historical and religious buildings, documents and other treasures that defined Iraqi civilization has not been seen since the time of Hulagu Khan. And that is why I think he was making the comparison. Modern cities like Fallujah have been utterly destroyed. The US has not only destroyed the physical necessities of Iraqi life but also thousands of years of cultural history. All of this in the name of “Iraqi Freedom”. Freedom that has seen a decline in wages by at least 50%, the destruction and stealing of jobs, and significant food shortages. An operation that destroyed cities and sent Iraq from a relatively advanced society - with modern hospitals and medicine - to over 500,000 Iraqi children who are suffering from malnutrition. Acute malnutrition doubled in Iraq within sixteen months of the occupation. It has dropped below the levels of Uganda and Haiti, two of the most desperate populations on the planet. 

Documentaries to learn more...

Fallujah: The Hidden Massacre 

Fallujah: The Real Story 

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